Wednesday, January 15, 2014

A Good Conscience Is A Continual Wednesday.

When you're a parent, you have to answer a lot of questions. Sometimes they're profound questions, like "What is God?" Or, sometimes they're mundane questions, like "Where do hot dogs come from?"

As it happens, the answer to both of these questions is the same, and it's as follows:

"Lips and assholes."

Still, it's not the kind of thing you want to lay on a kid, at least not until he or she is old enough to quell the resulting angst with drink.

Of course, the kinder answer is they're both processed items that most of us are generally willing consume without questioning them too much, but that's too complex for most young minds, so usually I just turn the music up and pretend not to hear.

Speaking of hot dogs and kids, on New Year's Day we piled into THE CAR THAT WE OWN and DROVE to the beach (because the sun setting over a frigid ocean is a perfect metaphor for the year ahead), and the first thing I noticed upon stepping onto the sand were these forlorn frozen weiners:

Most likely they'd been sitting there forgotten and un-barbecued since Labor Day, but I like to think it was a visit from God.

Depending on your cynicism level, this is either adorable or annoying as hell. With help from route-mapping tools like Strava, cyclists are spelling out proposals to their significant others. Finally, a bike-based proposal that gets around the fact that there’s really nowhere to hide a ring box in full-body spandex.

I'm actually not all that cynical when it comes to people loving each other, but I am extremely cynical when it comes to Strava so therefore I find this annoying as fuck. Additionally, I'm shocked and disappointed that someone writing in San Francisco of all places can't think of a decent place to hide a wedding ring when you're wearing form-fitting clothing, because I can think of at least one, or possibly even two (i.e. the "cigar ring method"), though the first would have made his saddle time that much more uncomfortable, and if this person can actually pull off the second then there's a very good chance his girlfriend won't want to marry him.

Anyway, these were all non-issues, because in this case Fred got his Wilma:

Though he was running a really big risk there, because the last reply you want after a Strava proposal is one like this:

In which case your final Strava upload looks something like this:

(Oh, loosen up for chrissakes. Suicide is hilarious! And it's twice as funny if you take a couple cats with you.)

By the way, I strongly suspect these Strava proposals are simply viral marketing by the company itself in order to draw attention away from the fact that their product turns you into a gigantic dork, and that using it is far more likely to result in divorce than marriage. To wit:

My wife accuses me of being in a state of denial about my addiction to Strava, the website and app that lets you analyse your cycling (and running) performance.She might have a point.At first I thought I could handle it. Uploading the data from my GPS device to the website after each ride was straightforward enough. Soon I had pages of information about my mileage, average speeds, elevation gained and even calories burned. I took innocent delight in beating my previous best times on certain routes.

First you're obsessing about how many calories you burned on your ride (everybody knows the only caloric metric that really matters is how many donuts you stuff in your face afterwards), and next thing you know you have an unhealthy obsession with the comings and goings of a guy named Bob Pugh:

My nemesis is a rider called Bob Pugh. We now “follow” each other and regularly give each other “kudos” – Strava’s equivalent of Facebook’s “Like” button – for our respective efforts, but I’m secretly looking for clues as to whether he will be going out riding the next day or not. Bob only goes out two or three times a week, but each ride is at least 100 miles long, so he regularly overtakes me in the standings, despite the fact I may have been out five or six times already that week.
And together they engage in a coy sort of "gamesmanship" that is only marginally related to cycling:

He’s definitely not averse to a bit of gamesmanship, once stating he would be “doing some painting and decorating for the next few days”. I jumped at the chance to gain some ground on him, only for him to sneak in another couple of epic rides and nudge me out of the top three yet again.

By the way, creepily, Strava will reveal all sorts of information about other people if you're willing pay for it:

The next step will be to learn a bit more about Bob, Leapfrog, et al. It would be useful to know if we are in the same age/weight range. Their photographs are inconclusive, and it will probably mark me down as a deranged stalker if I ask them directly how old and heavy they are. I might have to consider signing up to Strava’s premium service for £40 a year so that I can access this personal information.

So in other words, once you sign up for the "premium service," Strava goes from being a "performance analytics tool" and simply becomes a dating site--and, for only £80 a year, it will also send him an alert whenever Bob Pugh's wife leaves the house so the two of them can play "Leapfrog" together.

Oh, Strava, you homewrecker...

In other news, someone "tweeted" this at me, and I think it completely fails to make its point:

Nobody's going to give you any more space on the road just because you look like a typical SUV owner. If anything, the only things drivers even remotely yield to are guns and babies, so if anybody figures out how to make a suit out either of those things--or, better yet, both of them--then let me know.

(When handling a gun and a baby at the same time be sure to keep your finger off the trigger and the barrel pointed slightly away from the baby.)

Whereas you should always humor an inquisitive child, it's perfectly acceptable to tell a cyclist who asks a silly question to shut up--though unfortunately we have Lennard Zinn who humors these people anyway and tells them unintentionally hilarious stories about Mad Fiber wheels:

...in all of my years of riding cyclocross, I can think of only two wheels I’ve ruined, and never in a race. One was snagging the rear derailleur on a spoke, but that failure mode was unique to Mad Fiber due to the way the spokes flex outward under side load and would not have happened with a wire-spoked wheel in identical conditions. I did the same thing to another Mad Fiber rear wheel on the road bike on pavement as well.
Wow, so for thousands of dollars Mad Fiber was selling a wheelset that was basically a Dreamcatcher but for derailleurs? No wonder they went out of business--though needless to say until now he was touting their incredible stiffness:

Before I go into the details of why the $2,600 Mad Fiber wheelset is so different from others, you should know that the pair weighs 1,080 grams (!) and is very stiff. Being so thin and flat everywhere, they are probably quite aerodynamic as well.I rode the Mad Fiber wheels on the first day of Interbike’s Outdoor Demo and was very impressed with their stiffness when sprinting hard, as well as their steering precision and low weight. The braking, with the supplied cork brake pads, was quite effective, and the superlight quick releases work nicely.

Back in high-school I had a shitty job as a busboy/dishwasher. I used to imagine that I was in the Dishwasher Olympics to keep from going mad. I was blazingly fast; I loaded those trays and shoved them into the Hobart -- man, it was EPIC!

CD,I feel your pain. My first job was the same and I worked Sat/Sun 10 hours each. The worst experience was during Christmas where the carol tape was only 3 hours long. I wanted to kill myself and the everyone else.

I have to confess something: when I picture McFly in my mind, it's like the picture of the guy with the baby and the gun. Except instead of the baby it's a blow-up sex doll and the gun is a bottle of KY. Oh, and he's wearing camo underwear instead of camo pants.

I worked in a restaurant (office and busboy) years ago and agreed to record some music for it. I think I taped about 7 or 8 hours of stuff. After a week the waiters hated me. They liked the music the first time, and the second, but then not so much, and then they were begging for me to find new things.

The pic of the dad with gun was obviously taken in Florida, where any good parent would protect their families against public attacks by people yielding Skittles or Popcorn (which, by the way, are legal to carry in public thanks to your fucked up constitution). We banned popcorn and Skittles in 2002. This is why we throw eggs, and snort coke.

Did your wife/girlfriend give you an amazing BJ the first time she sucked your cock? Well I got some bad news...

BJs are like pizza and Italian motorcycles, even when they are bad, they still are awesome. Besides, who the hell wants to sleep with a virgin? I only consort with highly trained amateurs who could go pro at any time.

I never heard of strava before WCRM made fun of it. I didn't sign up for it before my seeing the neat maps on spoke'n'scene. (I'm jealous of how much Babs rides...I want sculpted calves too...I bet she ankles even when climbing)...but todays post will push me further...no more checking my power output on my dogwalks...I'm going to sign my wife up strava, get her to follow me & send her a giant weiner for valetines day...I can do that in a month

Yesterday's Comments: In response to the Commie Canuck post: Cipo is filing a deformation of character suit against Commie Canuck for having used the word Irishman in the same sentence with Italian and erection.

Re: whether gravel or pavement is more damaging to bike wheels. I really love how Lennard Zinn insists on insisting that the failure that happened TWICE with his noodley MadFred wheels would have also happened with a conventionally spoked wheel. I am calling bullshit on that.

I know that this is only anecdotal evidence (i.e., not the kind of hard hitting evidence that Lennard depends on), but I "race" CX on a bike with alloy rims and conventional spokes and I have never once flexed the wheels enough to snag the der with the flexed out spokes nor have I ever witnessed such a wheel failure. Granted I only race in the pass/fail sense, so I am probably not testing my equipment to quite the same degree that Lennard does. Maybe I might experience more spoke flex and destroy more wheels and rear derailleurs if I was man enough to go for the win.

I do believe if you go to the Strava website and read the software fine print before you hit the "accept" button, you will see that if you propose marriage on a pattern on a city grid, and if your time is beaten by another Strava member, ...he gets your woman.

That's why you should always read the end-user agreements in software, before you are surprised at your wedding by a sweaty little Irishman with a 7 week boner.

My first job was at Brown's Shoe Fit. My second job was a gravedigger/groundskeeper at the local cemetery.My third job was a grill cook at the U of Iowa. I was honored to make breakfast for Mr. Cheever and Mr. Updike many mornings.I liked the grave digging the best.

Emily and CommieCanuck - I had a GF in high school who gave awesome head. She sucked dick like a champ AND she swallowed. I had never really thought too much about it, but she was either some sort of phenom or she had sucked A LOT of dick before she met me. She was a bad Mormon girl, but I guess that she was badder than I thought.

I was driving the CAR THAT I OWN today when I suddenly noticed that breaking power was non-existent and the pedal had a just a little spongy feel before hitting the floor. Being only a block from home I went back and got on my bicycle and continued about my business. It's a little cold but I got my lobster gloves on.

Has Snob lost his faith in the Lob? Has he torn his plastic bib from his soul and left the church in a puddle of clarified butter and lemon wedges? Has he turned in his sacred blue Park Tools lobster cracker?"Do not forsake the lob, lest ye boil in hell." Tulio's letter to the Campagnolians. New Testament (free at participating Red Lobster locations).

It's Wednesday, I'm off today, there is weed to be had, and soon it will be time to pedal the bici. Due to the drought and warm temps, I can wear fingerless gloves and not die of the Frozen Death Hands.

FRZN DOGZ

Emily, it wasn't just the BJ Skills that were impressive the first time, it was the amazing kegels that finally made me believe that vaginas are magical.

CD & g.,I worked in a small office that had music pumped in from a 15-disc changer. Besides a set of 10 crappy pop compilation CDs that we had to keep in there all the time, the microchip in the damn thing wasn't too smart. "Random" still really only played off of maybe 5 of the discs and we had to go in every few days and mix them around to avoid lobotomizing ourselves with a .45.

Jesus could have fed a great multitude with those three frozen wieners though in the Good Book I think he used fish sticks. Anyway if he sat astride a great white stallion on the beach and preached to the wiener-fed masses it would come to be known as the sermon on the mount.

Pink Floyd – See Emily Play LyricsSongwriters: SYD BARRETTEmily tries but misunderstands, ah oohShe often inclined to borrow somebody's dreams till tomorrowThere is no other dayLet's try it another wayYou'll lose your mind and playFree games for maySee Emily playSoon after dark Emily cries, ah oohGazing through trees in sorrow hardly a sound till tomorrowThere is no other dayLet's try it another wayYou'll lose your mind and playFree games for maySee Emily playPut on a gown that touches the ground, ah oohFloat on a river forever and ever, EmilyThere is no other dayLet's try it another wayYou'll lose your mind and playFree games for maySee Emily play

Dancesonpeddles@105: "I'm jealous of how much Babs rides.." I'm jealous of Babble for another reason, once I had a gf who wouldn't learn how to swallow or give head on her knees. She's an ex. Now, well let's just say I found what I was looking for.

Snob! The Fuck! Gischzelle BungBrady was riding without a helment! And we all know scooters are bicycles for sissies......Thoughts? I need to know. and I got a sweet craigslist recumbent down here in Texas if'n yer interested.....

I'm with you all the way, beautiful Em. Re the learning of proper BJ's... I'm doing a bit of market research, cause it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to offer lessons in the art of deepthroat. So in the interests of a peer review, dearest peeps, please do tell: what would that kind of knowledge be worth?

Yeah hey - In art classes they hire a model to pose for the students. Presumably in deepthroat classes they need a model as well. Tell you what Babs, I'll graciously volunteer my services until the school gets off the ground.

Oh shit, now I'm picturing getting head from some random sweetie while Babs coos instructions to her... my pants are getting tight...

About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!